The typical rural mailbox or other mailbox meant to be stationed at roadside or curbside as opposed to being designed to be mounted directly on an outside wall of a house or other building is a horizontally elongated receptacle element surmounting an upright post. One problem with this traditional post-supported mailbox construction is the difficulty of securely fastening the mailbox on the post. A related problem is that such mailboxes frequently are sold separately from posts, so that the home builder or consumer must go to two sources for the respective components, and hope that a secure connection may be made between the mailbox and the post. A mailbox which extends laterally a substantial distance beyond the post to which it is secured has its distal structure inherently available as a moment arm for multiplying force applied to it in a sense to move the mailbox relative to the post. It is no wonder, then, that as conventional rural mailboxes are struck or otherwise wrenched by snow plows, vehicle-driving letter carriers having a momentary run of bad luck, drunk drivers or vandals, such mailboxes are all too frequently damaged, dislodged or knocked askew.
Some vertically-oriented, integrated with the supporting post mailboxes have been proposed in the prior art, but to the present inventor's knowledge, none has proved successful, presumably because they were too unusual to meet with official approval or consumer acceptance, and/or were too difficult and hence expensive to manufacture, and/or had design flaws which could not be overcome within the confines of the principles devised by their designers.